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Oxford East MP Andrew Smith said: “Especially after the difficulties that were previously revealed at the trust, the public will be concerned at this apparently big cut affecting frontline staff.

“Since the Francis Report into the awful deaths at Stafford Hospital showed how important it is to keep up or increase frontline staffing, it makes it all the more important that the mental health trust explains if it can comply with this.”

The Francis Report, into the deaths of hundreds of people at Stafford Hospital, said a chronic lack of staff was largely responsible for the substandard care.

Ian McKendrick, of Oxfordshire Unison health branch, said: “I do not see how it is going to be able to offer the same quality of service with a reduced level of staffing. It seems to fly in the face of the Francis Report. But all of this is happening in the context of the national cuts to the NHS. It is slash, slash, slash and managers are forced into a position of making frankly terrible choices.”

The proposals will see specialist services, including community mental health, assertive outreach teams and community acute services, brought under one roof with staff having to work across different areas. The new adult mental health team will deal with treatment and assessment 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Currently, community mental health teams operate from Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. After 5pm, patients use a GP out-of-hours service or the crisis team.

Oxford Health’s job cuts include 30.4 out of 181 whole-time equivalent posts from band 5 and 6 staff, which are registered social workers and nurses.

The foundation trust says it was not proposing redundancies but will not replace staff as they leave.

The restructuring was signed off by Oxford Health’s executive in June. The staff consultation began on September 2 and will end on October 4 with the new structure fully in place by April 1, 2014.

Oxford Health was criticised after life prisoner Ian McLean walked out of Littlemore Mental Health Centre and travelled to Poland, where he took his own life last month, and for its handling of Kauthar Silvera, who murdered her mother days after being discharged from the same place.

The trust was forced to make changes to its crisis team after the suicides of Gareth Christian and Graham Kirtland in 2011 and earlier this year both the Warneford Hospital and Littlemore Mental Health Centre failed inspections by the Care Quality Commission.

Oxford Health spokesman Duncan Alistair said: “The proposed changes are designed to improve patient safety in line with the Francis Report. The new model will mean service users will gain better access to staff with specialist skills, be able to maintain existing therapeutic relationships for more hours in the day and make greater use of the assessment/crisis function.”

Asked whether the changes were as a response to inquests into the suicides, a spokesman said: “We have taken into account the lessons from investigations into all relevant incidents as well as national guidance on good practice.”